Between Our Homes: Finding comfort in the unexpected during ArtPrize

With public installation pieces across unexpected spots downtown during ArtPrize, Hailey Lamb, KCAD Senior, allows us to dive into the art of the everyday. "Between Our Homes" is a series of public installations using large vinyl stickers of real text messages received from her family and friends. The vinyl stickers have messages such as, “It’s not a lot but it’s a start” and “I love you. Take your vitamins."

While her central pieces are located on the front windows of the Grand Rapids Public Museum, there are a total of twenty one other pieces scattered throughout the downtown Grand Rapids area. The pieces scattered downtown can be found on electric boxes, utility poles, dumpsters, and the like.

Her pieces allow us to take a moment and reflect on our everyday life and communication as a technological society while still being genuine. We often lose context and sincerity while sharing so much of our lives via texts and social media but #betweenourhomes allows that sincerity and comfort to shine through without losing our modern modes of contact. Her use of public work that is easily accessible to all community members and visitors is important and one of the special parts of ArtPrize as the community can actively engage with the art.

Lamb shares that last spring she “took a Special Topics class at Kendall taught by Devin DuMond that was all about new media in drawing” which inspired her “to start working with computer cut vinyl as a medium. The idea of using social media and text messaging as a platform with potential for comfort and encouragement," Lamb said. It is something that has always appealed to her, but something she said she has seen very little of in other art or media.

While she is technically a photography major at KCAD, she considers herself as more of a collagist. Lamb says she uses both "traditional cut-and-paste paper collages as well as digital collage" and is also "a quilter and fiber artist and has recently started working with assemblage using found objects."

Lamb said she wants the reaction to the pieces to be a “very intimate, quiet one. Because the pieces are in such unexpected places (electric boxes, utility poles, dumpsters), their discovery causes an immediate change in thought in the viewer." People are using the hashtag on Instagram to show which pieces they've found and showcasing where they've put the stickers they purchased in support of the project in places such as car bumpers and other areas in Grand Rapids.

You can follow snapshots of her life and work by following her on Instagram and searching the hashtag #BetweenOurHomes or by purchasing your own #BetweenOurHomes stickers on her Etsy page.